Welcome to GEFRI

Links

Mission and Approach DC Global Center Institute Objectives Research Focus Working Papers Executive Education Program Execution Seminar Series Conferences

Our Research Focus

GEFRI Research Program

GEFRI will explore an intersecting set of activities that represents the intersection of a wide range of disciplines of critical interest to business and government.

Global and entrepreneurial finance encompasses, within a global context, the conceptual, theoretical and applied disciplines of accountancy, business organization, economics, finance, engineering and applied science, information systems and technology, law, politics and public policy management, quantitative methods, and technology and innovation management.

The financing of large projects has become increasingly global in sourcing and scope, and while new businesses routinely are created with markets (and financing needs) that are global from inception, no scholarly program or disciplined course of study has emerged which focuses on the emerging importance of global finance generally, particularly where it intersects with entrepreneurial requirements. GEFRI will provide that program and define a new focus for research and scholarship, and, ultimately, a new course of study.

Global Risk measurement and management is a major area for research. Of the many concerns raised by globalization, financial volatility is one of the most dramatic, capturing the interest and the attention of the public, as summarized in the term crisis.  In the 1990s alone, the Gulf Crisis, the European Exchange-Rate Mechanism Crisis, the Tequila Crisis, the Asian Crisis, and the Russian Crisis, along with the spectacular failure of the hedge fund LTCM, brought home the volatility of the international financial system, its effect on the US and world economy, and the role of government and policy.  The new millennium has already given us financial crises in Brazil, Turkey, and Argentina, as well as the overnight disappearance of Enron, a virtually unregulated trader in international financial markets. Such crises are a recurrent feature of the international financial landscape. Indeed, each of the sponsoring GW faculty members has investigated aspects of the volatility and ongoing crises in the global, economic and financial environment. The widespread bank failures that have also proven extremely costly in many countries (e.g., U.S., Japan, and emerging market countries).  Another major area of interest and expertise is modeling the probability of bank or government financial failure (or specific market failures, such as secondary mortgage market failure) and implementing accounting, finance, and government policies to prevent and/or deal with such failures.   Modeling the credit risk of bank borrowers including smaller and non-public companies is an important aspect of modeling bank failure probabilities and appropriate capital requirement.

Link to: On-going Faculty Research

Globalization and financial turmoil is a major area for research.  Faculty members’ work may continue to focus, among other issues, on the mechanism of contagion, especially the role of foreign speculators, as well as the role of speculators in financial turmoil.

The role of international capital flows in both volatility and the sourcing of financing for businesses and projects is a second theme. Faculty research may extend the examination not only of financial markets but also economic activity, consumption, and investment in emerging economies.  These are relevant to work on differences between FDI and financial capital flows, and more generally, capital inflows and economic growth.

The rise of domestic bond market in emerging markets.  This is the fastest growing area of financial markets in emerging markets especially in Asia. In 2005, the size of local currency bond market in emerging markets was about US$3.5 trillion or almost 10 times foreign currency denominated emerging market debt. GEFRI’s research fellows have extensive experience in bond market development in East and South Asia, Latin America and Africa through their works with the MDBs and several publications in this area.

Link to: List of publications

Entrepreneurial finance including angel, venture capital, strategic investor, vendor and private equity finance and the connections to public/private partnerships, technology innovation, transfer, and commercialization and comparative studies of critical success and failure factors and lessons learned across developed, transitioning and developing economies are also topics of great interest. 

Link to: Research Collaboration Opportunities